In the Brunswick pinsetter automatic bowling machine the pins ride up a conveyor belt which feeds them to a turret which positions each pin in a basket above its respective deck chute. As the last pin reaches its position in the turret, the turret release is triggered and the pins are delivered to their respective deck chutes from whence they are positioned on the bowling alley.
As the bowling pins exit the cross conveyor belt for deposit into the turret, they are intended to fall onto a turret indexing paddle. In practice, however, the pins often contact the wires of the individual turret baskets and ricochet off the wires onto the paddle. The impact of the pins against the wires causes the wires to break. When this happens the pins can jam causing the machine to malfunction. The machine must then be taken out of service until the broken wires are replaced. Even when the wires are unbroken, when the pin ricochets off the wires it may strike the indexing paddle with insufficient force to index the turret. The turret then has to be indexed manually.